


Carry With Us

by fluffernutter8



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steggy Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 16:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19891057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Steve misplaces something.





	Carry With Us

Maybe it happens when they donate a pile of clothes to the Goodwill, or maybe it’s when, searching for his housekeys, he desperately dumps onto the doorstep everything he’s carrying so he can unlock the door for the seven-year-old dancing in distress for the bathroom beside him. It doesn’t really matter how it happens because the outcome is the same: one afternoon he reaches a hand into his pocket and realizes that his compass is missing.

He hasn’t really contemplated it in a long while but he still likes to carry it, to transfer it from one pair of pants to the next, to run a thumb over it every so often. It was a particular companion for years in a way that nothing else could be, a bittersweet reminder of what could have been, a staunch and expectant reminder of who he is, who he’s always been. The familiar feeling of the metal was comforting and constant the way his wedding ring is now. That he allowed it to disappear shakes him nearly as much as the fact that it is gone.

Each day while Peggy is at work and the kids are at school, he tears apart the house. He checks beneath each piece of furniture and cleans out the entire refrigerator, as if he might find it hiding behind the mustard and next to the lettuce that should have been thrown out two weeks ago. He takes apart the washer and dryer, wondering if it might have gotten stuck somewhere inside. (It isn’t anywhere in there that he can find; he’s grateful that Peggy doesn’t usually venture into the laundry room and none of the kids desperately need some particular item of clothing because the things are dismantled for three days before the repairman comes out to put them back together.)

Satisfied though disappointed that it is nowhere in the house, Steve begins to subtly inquire of the neighbors. 

“An old Army compass,” he tells Mrs. Bascomb. “It has sentimental value,” which is inadequate, but telling her that it has accompanied him through war, a new life in another century, and then back home again seems excessive.

He asks his own children as well, even more carefully. Whether because they are young, or because they are Peggy’s too, they are terribly inquisitive and persistent.

The advice he’s been pondering in his own head comes back in a three-year-old lisp, slightly slurred on the S: “Why don’t you ask Mummy about it?”

Why doesn’t he ask Peggy? She hadn’t given him the compass, hadn’t even given him the picture inside. He hasn’t been careless with something she had selected and gifted to him. And he doesn’t usually keep things from her either. In the past that has been reserved for surprises, or perhaps when she is overly stressed and doesn't need to be thinking about the stain the kids left by painting on the carpet. Even if she becomes upset with him over it - for losing something that symbolized the ways she was with him even when she couldn't be, for hiding it for this long - he knows that she loves him and this won't end them.

So one night, after they have turned off the light and relaxed into bed together, he says into the dark, "I lost my compass."

The blanket shuffles as she turns herself over to face him, even with the curtains shut against the moon. "Is that why you've been so out of sorts?"

"I was hoping you would think it was because the new kid throws our paper in the bushes," he jokes.

"You'd be out of a different kind of sorts. Quietly stewing instead a bit frantic, " she tells him. “And the house has never looked cleaner besides.” She knows him so well. 

"I've been looking all over for it. I think it's gone."

He half expects her to pull it from behind his ear, his brilliant wife who seems to come with solutions for the thorniest problems, who continues to surprise him even after all their time together. But instead she says, "Well, what if it is?"

"I just—I liked having it around." He stops, and she lets him, her legs against his beneath the blanket, her silence soft as she waits. "All that time when I had nothing, or had too much, I'd look at it and it would help me remember everything I needed to. For a long time, it was all I had. It guided me when I didn't have you there."

Gently, she points out, "But now you do have me here," and he shivers out a breath as he says, "But I might not always."

He had always been older than she, even before he lived ten years for her three, but it's obvious that his body doesn't age in quite the same way as others do.

"That's true," she says, still calm, not disturbed by the idea. "And it's a lovely thought, reminding yourself of the way you are at the core, of who we once were. But it also came from a time when you didn't have much else of me. By the time I'm gone, I would hope I will have left something more of an impression. More memories. More bits and bobs to remember me by." She readjusts her head on the pillow, her voice growing softer. Even he almost has to strain for it. "I had a photograph of you that I kept in my desk for a long time. Of you before the serum. It reminded me...I would look at it and remember the kind of person you had been, think about how you would advise me, what you would have expected of me. But now I can come home and find you here instead. I can truly consult you about these situations, even as I change and the world changes along with me. And isn't that even better?"

"Of course it is. It's only—The compass and I—We've just traveled pretty far together." A new thought occurs to him. "In some ways, it's sort of beautiful that I didn't need it much anymore, that we've got the life here that we do. But that compass, it's the only thing that's known me in all the times I've lived. It was there when I went into the ice, and when I came out, and when I came back again. I had thought it would always be there."

"Perhaps things aren't meant to stay around forever." Her voice is a mixture of compassion and straightforward sense. "And perhaps we can look to value them while they are, then allow ourselves to let them go if we must."

Slowly he says, "Or maybe we can look at them as an opportunity to make ourselves something new."

* * *

Steve buys himself a wristwatch with a face that lifts up. The circular picture inside is a candid of his wife and children laughing together during a picnic in the park. The light falls blessedly over them, and each time Steve looks at it he smiles.

 _Time moves quickly_ , reads the inscription on the back of the face. _Make good decisions. Value the right things. Don't forget._

He doesn't.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Tropes, clichés, symbols, and associations


End file.
